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Thunderstorm asthma shows 'worrying' trend

Thunderstorm asthma shows 'worrying' trend

Sarah Wiedersehn
on December 2, 2016, 9:31 pm

Four in 10 people experiencing thunderstorm asthma symptoms had not been diagnosed with asthma.

Four in 10 people experiencing thunderstorm asthma symptoms had not been diagnosed with asthma yet most had suffered hay fever prior to last week's freak event in Victoria, an Asthma Australia survey has found.

Early results from the online survey conducted following the deadly thunderstorm asthma event have highlighted a "worrying" lack of awareness about the common disease of the airways.

Of the first 2000 respondents who did have an asthma diagnosis, 68 per cent had been prescribed preventer medication but only 29 per cent took it every day.

Preventer medications reduce the underlying inflammation of the airways, protecting people from symptoms and potentially serious asthma attacks when exposed to triggers like pollen.

Asthma Australia CEO Michele Goldman says the early results are proof that more needs to be done to improve asthma awareness and management.

"Asthma is a common condition that can be life threatening. Not only is good management essential for people diagnosed with asthma, such as taking preventer medication as prescribed, it is also vital that everyone is aware of asthma - how to spot the symptoms and what to do in an asthma emergency," Ms Goldman said in a statement on Friday.

Eight people have died and one person is still fighting for life after a rare explosion of pollen caused breathing difficulties for thousands of Victorians last week, including hundreds of children.
Dozens of experts are now studying the outbreak, which tested the state's ambulance service and hospitals, including some which deviated from the state's health emergency response plan.

Ranjith Peiris became the eighth victim of last week's thunderstorm asthma. Photo: supplied As a government-ordered review of the disaster begins, state opposition health spokeswoman Mary Wooldridge called for the inquiry to be expedited so Victorians can trust emergency services heading into the bushfire season.

Ms Wooldridge also called for Ambulance Victoria to explain why some people were given information about how long they would wait for paramedics on the night, while others did not receive estimates.

The family of Roxburgh Park man Ranjith Peiris​ who died at Northern Hospital on Tuesday, have questioned why they were not told to drive him to hospital. The family claims they waited more than an hour for paramedics to arrive but Ambulance Victoria said it took 28 minutes.

"Mum just keeps saying, 'if only they told me, if only they told me. If only I knew I would have brought you here earlier', Mr Peiris' son Roshan​ said on Tuesday.

Asthma sufferer Palli Zamani with his mother Rayann Zamani. Photo: Justin McManus "How will the state react if there was a real disaster?"

Dr Michael Sutherland, a respiratory physician and allergist at the Epworth Hospital, said the event was "by far the worst" in world history, and could prompt doctors to prescribe preventative medication to people with severe hay fever who are not asthmatic during spring.

Dr Mark Hotu with Asthma suferer Angelique Harkins. Photo: Jason South He said anybody who experienced wheezing, coughing or shortness of breath during the outbreak should discuss it with their GP because they may be asthmatic, or want allergy testing to explore better treatments for symptoms that put them at risk.

Health authorities, meteorologists, botanists, and doctors are now trying to understand the causes of last week's epidemic so they can try to predict future events, and warn the public.

A working group has been established by the state government to explore whether other pollens, such as fungal spores, and pollutants contributed to the event, and to set up a warning system for next year.

Fairfax Media understands doctors are also testing victims who were hospitalised to see if they share common histories and allergies.

Ed Newbigin, a botanist from University of Melbourne, said there were "noticeable levels of fungal spores" in the air last Monday and Tuesday, in addition to the high grass pollen levels, that were being studied. Fungal spores have been implicated in thunderstorm events in Queensland.

Associate Professor Newbigin said while experts can broadly predict the chance of thunderstorm asthma by looking at the weather and pollen forecasts, they can't accurately predict the likelihood of it being catastrophic.

"We don't know what it is that causes a major event because in Melbourne we might get thunderstorm asthma events once every four or five years but not all of them are major catastrophic events like the one from Monday," he said.

"Is it something about the nature of the storm or the type of the storm, or the humidity? Or is it a particular type of wind that is produced by the thunderstorm?"

Associate Professor Newbigin said he and others were now studying past events for common threads.

"We've got data from the Bureau about storms and types of storms, we just need to sit down and crunch that data and figure it out."

A spokesman for Ambulance Victoria would not comment on what protocols applied last week during the crisis, and whether all callers were given estimates of response times.

"The Inspector-General for Emergency Management will conduct a comprehensive review into the circumstances surrounding the response," he said.

"This independent review will consider the appropriateness of actions taken and any opportunities for improvement."

Asthma Australia is now surveying people who felt symptoms during last week's outbreak to better understand what can be done to protect them in future.

"Although these events are rare we need to think about how we can be best prepared in future," CEO of Asthma Australia Michele Goldman said.

(CNN)An unusual combination of weather conditions leading to a freak illness known as thunderstorm asthma has left fourpeople dead in Australia.

Thousands of people were rushed to hospital Mondaywith breathing problems in the southern Australian state of Victoria as emergency services struggled to cope.

Three were still in a critical condition Thursday, a Victorian Department of Health spokesman told CNN.During a four hour period Monday, Ambulance Victoria received more than 1,900 calls, or one call every four to five seconds. An extra 60 ambulances were deployed, as well as police and firefighters.

Thunderstorm asthma occurs when a storm hits during a period of unusually high rye grass pollen, said Robin Ould, chief executive of the Asthma Foundation of Australia."When you have a perfect storm coming together (of) a very high pollen day, high humidity, and a thunderstorm, the grains of rye grass absorb water with the humidity and they break up into thousands of pieces," Ould said."Normally with rye grass the pollen would be trapped by nose hairs. When it breaks up it goes straight to the lungs."The pollen irritates the lungs' bronchial tubes, causing them to become inflamed and filled with mucus and making it hard for people to breathe.Pollen levels peak in late spring. When this combines with strong winds, rain and high temperatures, as it did in Victoria this week, it can lead to incidents of thunderstorm asthma.

I'm not buying the "official" explanation for this.
Local to me dozens and dozens of folks have suddenly developed severe respiratory issues, folks who never had problems before. And I'm nowhere near Australia...
It does not seem to be disease, doesn't present with fever or other illness like symptoms, but could be non-tubercular mycobacterium/mold/fungus unknown.
What I do know is onset is sudden and causes severe shortness of breath, dizziness, and generally asthma like symptoms.
Local medical officials are completely silent on the condition.

”The trouble with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's money.” - Margaret Thatcher

I'm not buying the "official" explanation for this.
Local to me dozens and dozens of folks have suddenly developed severe respiratory issues, folks who never had problems before. And I'm nowhere near Australia...
It does not seem to be disease, doesn't present with fever or other illness like symptoms, but could be non-tubercular mycobacterium/mold/fungus unknown.
What I do know is onset is sudden and causes severe shortness of breath, dizziness, and generally asthma like symptoms.
Local medical officials are completely silent on the condition.

I have my doubts too. Look at the graphic for #3. "Dry cold outflows"? It's a thunderstorm! Here in CA it means RAIN.

2Tim. 3:1 ¶ But realize this, that in the last days difficult times will come.
2Tim. 4:3 For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but wanting to have their ears tickled, they will accumulate for themselves teachers in accordance to their own desires;
2Tim. 4:4 and will turn away their ears from the truth, and will turn aside to myths.

Biological warfare-like ‘thunderstorm asthma’ killing Australians

(NaturalNews) (NaturalNews.com) You won’t hear much about it in the global establishment media, but thousands of Australians have been hospitalized in recent days – with more than six dying – as a result of what some think could be a biological warfare experiment gone awry.

According to a few locally published reports, including one from The Sydney Morning Herald, the phenomenon that sent some 8,500 people to the hospital (and a few to the morgue) is called “thunderstorm asthma,” which overwhelmed ambulance and emergency services with respiratory problems and sudden shortness of breath associated with the condition.

On a recent Friday afternoon, the paper reported, department of health officials noted that “a number of people” remained hospitalized in intensive care because of the outbreak, with five being listed as “critical.”

In all, the department said the bulk of the 8,500-plus Australians who went to Victorian hospitals on the following Monday and Tuesday were admitted due to breathing problems. The stormy weather conditions caused pollen to literally explode in the air, which affected people across the state, especially those with histories of lung problems and asthma.

This must be a rare event because nobody planned for it

On Tuesday, officials with Ambulance Victoria said the service received almost 2,000 calls for help during a five-hour period the previous Monday night, or about six times their normal call load. The paper said officials confirmed that two people died after ambulances took 15 and 31 minutes respectively to reach them.

Families grieving over the loss of loved ones are now openly questioning whether the disaster was predictable, and whether government officials and weather forecasters missed out on the opportunity to warn the public. Also, Australians are questioning whether the ambulance service should have told people to drive affected loved ones to hospitals on their own because of delays.

Jill Hennessy, the health minister for Victoria, said overwhelmed emergency services were not immediately certain what they were dealing with as calls poured in and demand for assistance from other services and, most likely off-duty personnel, soared.

“When we have one bomb go off, we know what we’re dealing with,” she told local media. But when there were so many people calling for ambulances – about one call every 4.5 seconds at the outbreak’s peak – “it was like having 150 bombs going off right across” a specific part of “metropolitan Melbourne.” She added that was a scenario that the service and the health department never planned for.

That means what happened is very rare; it would have to be, otherwise emergency services and the country’s health agencies would most certainly have practiced how to respond and would have had a protocol in place.

Something doesn’t add up here

So, what exactly is thunderstorm asthma? According to the Sydney Morning Herald, it is a health emergency that occurs following a sudden change in weather – with specific additional conditions present, apparently.

The paper said that hot, dry weather drove Melbourne’s temperature up shortly before a thunderstorm broke out after about 6 p.m. local time. The storm and associated heavy rains caused rye grass pollen to absorb moisture and then burst, which dispersed smaller pollen particles in the air to become trapped in people’s lungs.

That sudden “pollen load” then caused the wave of thousands of victims to suffer breathing issues and even cardiac arrest.

The ambulance demand was so great that Ambulance Victoria officials were forced to call in firefighters, police officers and non-emergency patient vehicles as well as doctors trained in disasters to get them in the field to treat and transport acutely ill patients.

Strangely missing from the Morning Herald’s piece was any information on just how rare this event is, which makes it suspicious. Some, including The Daily Sheeple, believe there may be something more sinister at play here.

The official story on this just sounds totally made up.
More than 8,500 people were hospitalized last week and six have now died in Australia due to what is being reported as a rare phenomenon known as “thunderstorm asthma”.
(I told you it sounds totally made up.)
Right now if you search for this story on Google News Australia, there isn’t a peep about it in the top news. You have to type in the word “asthma”.
Then it’s like a horror show.

The Sydney Morning Herald reported that at the peak of this “thunderstorm asthma” outbreak, people were calling for an ambulance one every 4.5 seconds and “it was like 150 bombs going off”:

“When we’ve had people calling for ambulances – one call every 4½ seconds at the peak – it was like having 150 bombs going off right across a particular part of metropolitan Melbourne.
And that’s something we’ve never really planned for.”

Here’s the “official story”.
What officials are suggesting happened is that pollen grains from rye grass fields surrounding Melboune were blown across the city just before a sudden downpour. Once the rain hit, the pollen grains absorbed the moisture and burst in the air, releasing thousands of much smaller allergen nanoparticles that were inhaled and became trapped in people’s lungs.
Once the rain stopped, thousands of people began suffering asthma symptoms all at once, everything from breathing issues to cardiac problems.
Some people suffered heart attacks. Six people have died so far. One girl died in her family’s arms in their front lawn after waiting more than half an hour for an ambulance. The system was completely overloaded. Apparently in Melbourne they ran out of ambulances and had to resort to every other emergency and even non-emergency vehicles they could find to help get people to the hospital. More than 60 people are still in the hospital, some in critical condition fighting for their lives.
Officials claim this can occur when weather conditions suddenly change, but in an era where they’re trying to get us to believe in man-made climate change, I call B.S. Doesn’t that just sound ridiculous on the surface? The weather suddenly changes all the time. If that’s really all it is, why doesn’t this “rare phenomenon” happen a lot more often?
The official story sounds fishy to say the least, which is why speculation has risen that some kind of biological warfare agent is being tested. Sure, that’s conspiracy talk, but for once the conspiracy sounds a hell of a lot more plausible than the official narrative of “thunderstorm asthma”.

“Anarchism is the liberation of the human mind from the dominion of religion and liberation of the human body from the coercion of property; liberation from the shackles and restraint of government. It is a social order based on the free grouping of individuals…”

Since I don't live in Australia and must acknowledge that things are probably different there than here, I can tell you asthma doesn't work this way where I live. The PNW has very high pollen counts in the spring and early summer. Most of the asthma sufferers I know get real relief when it rains, whether it's a downpour or a gentle drizzle. The moisture in the air absorbs the pollens and takes them right down to the ground, where people don't aren't usually breathing in pollutiants. Rain cleans the air rather than polluting it. Something about this story just doesn't compute.

I have my doubts too. Look at the graphic for #3. "Dry cold outflows"? It's a thunderstorm! Here in CA it means RAIN.

Clouds form when the air gets too cool for water to stay evaporated. Normally that means moving damp air higher will cause it to form clouds. That's where cumulus clouds come from. If that air moves down the cloud disappears as the water evaporates. That's where lenticular clouds come from - the water becomes droplets as air moves over a mountain, and droplets evaporate as the air comes down on the other side of the peak.

So damp air up in a thunderstorm cloud may drop after getting chilled, and as it drops it vanishes as the droplets evaporate. It's still damp air, but the relative humidity falls so it's dryer than it was when higher. That sets all the pollen and fragments loose that were entrained in the droplets.

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